Ever since reading Walter Benjamin's "Unpacking My Library" years ago, Benjamin and his various archives and projects have been my model as a collector. Benjamin serves as a guardian angel watching over Mimeo Mimeo. I highly recommend Verso's Walter Benjamin's Archive. Fascinating insights into a collection and the passion and mind that drove and organized it.

Benjamin makes me feel good as a collector unlike Jean Baudrillard and his essay "The System of Collecting." Who wants to be that guy? It is a fine line between collector (order, sanity) and horder (chaos, madness).

Looking over Benjamin's archive it is easy to see his loving gathering of Russian peasant figurines as a countermeasure to the Nazis ruthless roundup of human beings. One collection preserves and keeps alive and one exterminates. The collecting impulse is both merciful and murderous.

In 1989, I walked through Auschwitz., an experience which I will never forget. When confronted with Benjamin and his archive, I always flash to Auschwitz and a room filled floor to ceiling with suitcases. The fate of an archive is ultimately depressing, leading to an inevitable death and dispersal. I am reminded of the fate of some other suitcases: Benjamin's lost at the Spanish border; Duchamp's institutionalized in the museum.

MIMEO MIMEO #7

MIMEO MIMEO #7: THE LEWIS WARSH ISSUE is the first magazine ever devoted in its entirety to poet, novelist, publisher, teacher, and collage artist Lewis Warsh. Warsh was born in 1944 in the Bronx, co-founded Angel Hair Magazine and Books with Anne Waldman in 1966, and went on to co-found United Artists Magazine and Books with Bernadette Mayer in 1977. He is the author of over thirty books of poetry, fiction and autobiography, the Director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Long Island University in Brooklyn, and as you’ll soon discover, so much more. Includes an introduction by Daniel Kane, an interview conducted by Steve Clay, 10 new stories, 5 new poems, dozens of photographs and collages, and an anecdotal bibliography.

MM#7 ($20 + S&H)

Please visit Granary Books to see a selection of striking collages and collage books created by Lewis Warsh.

MIMEO MIMEO #6

MIMEO MIMEO #6: THE POETRY ISSUE is devoted to new work by eight poets who have consistently composed quality writing that has influenced and inspired generations since the golden era of the mimeo revolution. Contributors include Bill Berkson, John Godfrey, Ted Greenwald, Joanne Kyger, Kit Robinson, Rosmarie Waldrop, Lewis Warsh, and Geoffrey Young. Cover art by George Schneeman.
The few copies that remain can be purchased via SPD.

MIMEO MIMEO #5

MIMEO MIMEO #5: includes a lost and found essay by Paul Blackburn on the mimeo revolution, Steve Clay on Robert Creeley’s copy of Presences, Michael Klausman on the art of poetry LPs, interviews with Lyn Hejinian and Larry Fagin, Stephanie Anderson on Alice Notley’s CHICAGO, Abel Debritto on Charles Bukowski’s rise to fame, and more. Cover art by Buzz Spector.

MM#5 ($10 + S&H)

MIMEO MIMEO #4

MIMEO MIMEO #4: focuses on the poets, artists, printers, and publications of the British Poetry Revival, a particularly rich period of activity that ran roughly parallel to the New American Poetry of the post-WWII era. On both sides of the Atlantic, the dominant modes of poetics, publishing, and media were being thought anew. Featuring: wide-ranging interviews with Tom Raworth, David Meltzer, and Trevor Winkfield; insightful essays by Richard Price, Ken Edwards, and Alan Halsey; a selection of letters from Eric Mottram to Jeff Nuttall providing a British perspective on the Lower East Side Scene; and a long out-of-print statement by Asa Benveniste, poet and publisher of London’s legendary Trigram Press. The few copies that remain can be purchased via SPD.

MIMEO MIMEO #3

MIMEO MIMEO #3: THE DANNY SNELSON ISSUE examines the relationship between structuralism and the poetries of the mimeo era by presenting a detailed analysis of Form (a Cambridge-UK magazine published in 1966) and Alcheringa (a journal published by Boston University in 1975), two exemplary gatherings that illuminate the historical, material and social circumstances under which theory informed art (and vice versa) in the early works of some of today's most celebrated experimental writers. Also includes a special insert, The Infernal Method, written, designed and printed by Aaron Cohick (NewLights Press). OOP.

MIMEO MIMEO #2

MIMEO MIMEO #2: features Emily McVarish on her artist's book Flicker; James Maynard on poet Robert Duncan's early experiences as an editor and typesetter; Derek Beaulieu on the relationship between the influential Canadian poetry journal Tish and Black Mountain College; and an extensive interview with Australian poet and typographer Alan Loney conducted by Kyle Schlesinger. Cover is by Emily McVarish.
The few copies that remain can be purchased via SPD.

MIMEO MIMEO #1

MIMEO MIMEO #1: features Christopher Harter on Midwest mimeo; Jed Birmingham on British poet and critic Jeff Nuttall's My Own Mag; an extensive interview with acclaimed printer, bibliographer and critic Alastair Johnston of Poltroon Press, and poems by Stephen Vincent inspired by Jack Spicer. Cover is by Alastair Johnston.
The few copies that remain can be purchased via SPD.

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MIMEO MIMEO

Mimeo Mimeo is a forum for critical and cultural perspectives on artists' books, typography and the mimeograph revolution. This periodical features essays, interviews, artifacts, and reflections on the graphic, material and textual conditions of contemporary poetry and language arts.

Taking our cue from Steve Clay and Rodney Phillips' ground-breaking sourcebook, A Secret Location on the Lower East Side, we see the mimeograph as one among many print technologies (letterpress, offset, silk-screen, photocopies, computers, etc.) that enabled poets, artists and editors to become independent publishers. As editors, we have no allegiance to any particular medium or media (tho Mimeo Mimeo is only available in print at this time). We understand the mimeo revolution as an attitude - a material and immaterial perspective on the politics of print.

Jed Birmingham & Kyle Schlesinger

Threads, a series of talks curated by Steve Clay and Kyle Schlesinger, is devoted to the art of the book featuring poets, scholars, artists, and publishers.